some ranting

Dear Blizzard, please stop hard-selling me on an expansion that I wont be able to play for a year. It's just cruel.

Last week I bought a really expensive mount that also came with a level 100 character boost. How many god damn times do these guys expect me to run the same raids, upgrade the same garrison, level the same followers, collect the same daily resources. I only ever play one out of the four 100s I have already.

So I guess I'll do what I did last time and save it until the expansion becomes playable, which usually happens a week or two after the release date. Maybe I can use it on that new class oh wait... Would they even let me boost a demon hunter from level 95 to 100?

But you know what I fucking would pay extra for? A level 1 demon hunter, that I can actually play the majority of the game with. Yes I fucking get today that the whole game and all its players are completely focused on endgame and nobody gives a shit. I do though. I give a shit.


I really need to find me a proper guild. This game isn't doing it for me as a solo experience any more.

I rolled another shaman, the fourth one by my count. Because at least while you're leveling there's a variety of environments and your power progression is rapid and noticeable. Your gameplay changes over time as you gain new abilities. And unlike the endgame you actually feel like you're playing a small character in a massive world. My main toon is practically a god at this point when it comes to solo content.

And I think.... I think I just don't like Draenor very much. Not the expansion, the continent. The whole place feels very sterile, like it's a playground covered in soft foam so nobody could possibly hurt themselves. Is that what flying has done? I don't remember feeling this way before. The game is still great, but somehow the world doesn't seem compelling any more.

On abortion owls

I was feeling depressed so I decided to craft some more golden cards for my Hearthstone paladin rush deck that I've been playing since not long after my last post.

It's this one: http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/276624-s16-legendary-aggro-paladin

But the one change I make is I drop the 1-mana pirate and have one more Abortion Owl because I think silence is just so useful in so many situations and the most common is stopping a Deathrattle from spawning additional minions-- effectively you're killing a minion that doesn't exist yet. You're aborting it.

So I crafted two golden owls. You can see the night sky rotating behind them and holy shit their fucking eyes glow. Evil fucking eye glow, which I guess is appropriate for a bird who performs non-consensual abortions as a combat tactic. And then it hit me. South Park Woodland Critter Christmas Hail Satan! He's an evil critter that performs abortions! Does anyone else remember that thing? Remember South Park? From the 90s..? Poor little feller.

But anyway, as I wrote this (more or less) I literally just won a game by silencing my opponent's last ditch tank, propelling me into a win streak. I think silences are really strong in the meta right now. Most decks these days feature some kind of deathrattle or inspire or other trigger that ramps or provides some other critical advantage.

Um, but yeah. I haven't played wow since I moved house and neglected to tell my guild that I couldn't make the raids that week and they booted me and I just got down on the game.

I've been playing this indie-ish RPG that I found on Steam called Darkest Dungeon. It's roguelike and really mathy and I can barely progress and I fucking love it. The positioning mechanic is really interesting, and as I say that I realise it probably qualifies for nerdiest thing said ever. I swear to god positioning is fucking interesting motherfucker. Didn't you ever play Kwirk? Or like, um, Boxxle?

I think I'm out of things to say.

Does anyone read this?

Hidden Tiger

I made a pretty cool Hearthstone deck with some of the new expansion cards that I've been sitting at about Rank 8 with for the last couple of days. I call it Hidden Tiger and I'm way too pleased with that word play. Yes, the deck does in fact include lions, and tigers, and a few bears. This also pleases me way too much.

I'm super excited about it because I never thought I'd be able to make a "competitive" and also super fun deck with just my own brain meats. The idea of the math behind mana curves makes me depressed so I always looked up decks online and used the ones I thought were fun.

My deck uses the current meta efficiency combo plate of two Eaglehorn Bow, six Secrets and two Mad Scientists, with a focus on efficient midgame minions and low-cost removal to supplement the traps and weapon. But anyway I already wrote about it. Comments are super appreciated.

Again!

Some thoughts on the expansion info that has been revealed so far.

The Legion is back! Again! The Burning Crusade was merely a setback. Now begins the Legion Crusade! Though if this one turns out to be a setback too, they'll probably be back in about expansion number ten with a fully armed and fully operational Burning Legion Crusade. If we kill Archimonde any more the lore team might finally give up and just say respawning is canon.

Artifact weapons sound like a great alternate progression system, and anything that might simplify loot tables a bit is probably good-- we don't need more gear slots to fill. Class quests sound dumb but whatever, so are most quests.

The third new class to be added to the game is the Demon Hunter from Diablo. Though for some reason in WoW it's a melee class, not ranged. I assume they just liked the name "Demon Hunter" because it's expansion appropriate and threw out everything but the name like any good corporation trying to exploit a franchise.

Do the devs know something I don't, which is why they have never created a new ranged class? I just don't get why it keeps happening. I'm not saying it's definitely not a coincidence, but three is a much clearer pattern than two. If it continues like that, next we'll get either a melee Witch Doctor or melee Wizard.

The other disappointing thing is that like Death Knights you can't level Demon Hunters from the start of the game. Levels one through ninety-four are missing from this class. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a minority of players because I don't actively resent every unnecessary second that Blizzard forces me to play their video game.

Also, and I might be splitting hairs here, but two hero classes? It's like the word hero has no meaning any more.

Hypocrisy

The very same day I was complaining in this blog about my raid giving gear to healers and tanks first I found myself in a position to benefit from that very policy and completely forgot to protest. Our warrior tank has all his tier bonuses so I'm only competing with one other healer for token drops now. I feel a bit guilty, like any situation where I notice that I'm benefiting from an unfair system. Should I have refused the token on principle?

It's weird to realise that if I had been any higher on the list I wouldn't have ended up with only Heroic tokens-- previous token drops were almost all from the normal modes that we've been farming for this purpose. The people who got tokens before me are going to have to wait for the DPS to complete their bonuses before they can justify taking the ilevel upgrade. This tier sure is about the bonuses.

Speaking of which, the legendary ring has been depressing me. I feel like we are moving towards this ring being absolutely compulsory for all raiders, and I have lost faith in Blizzard to have any awareness of this kind of power creep.

It would be nice if I could just raid normally and get it, but several months ago I made the mistake of not playing the game for a bit. When I came back to raiding I still needed Highmaul drops for the quest, but my raid was only doing Blackrock Foundry. Today I still need Blackrock Foundry drops when my raid is only doing Hellfire Citadel-- basically I never caught up and actually probably fell further behind because I'm out of sync with the reward structure. Doesn't really seem fair, but I don't care so much that I'm willing to resort to grinding for the sake of "efficiency".

Avoidable mechanics

Spirit spirit everywhere but not a GCD to drink.

Y'know because mana tea is based on spirit now but GCDs are too valuable to spend drinking it. So it's an accurate analogy.

For most of the previous raid tier I felt distinctly regen starved, but having the opposite problem is way more frustrating. Being low on regen at least forces you to play better to compensate. Too much mana will always dumb down healer gameplay, and I have to say I feel pretty dumb running a spam healing rotation on the entire raid at all times because I literally don't have anything else to do with the mana and if I don't overheal I'll end up at the bottom of the numbers.

My raid has been overhealing every single fight. Even progression fights. It's completely ridiculous. I switched to DPS at the beginning of last night's raid (even though I hate melee) because the excess of healing is so obvious that I feel like a dickhead contributing to it. They asked me to switch back to healing on the second boss after a few wipes that of course had zero to do with healing throughput, and we overhealed the rest of the raid.

Is there a way I can point this out without seeming like I'm acting subversively towards the guild? WoW players are a passionate bunch and experience has taught me that their sense of loyalty is very easily offended.

How do players usually figure out an ideal healer/dps ratio? Most people seem to want more healing than they need-- is it a common cognitive bias to think this? Does Blizzard quote any specific ideal ratio? Does the skill level of the group affect healing demand? Should it? I'd hazard a guess that the top ten raiding guilds use fewer healers than most groups.

What I know is that when I heal a challenging 5-man dungeon, I feel like I'm using all the tools of my class as intended, making efficient choices and reacting to dangerous situations. When I heal as part of a team I try to see "around" what all the other healers are doing to fill the gaps, and most of the time it's just really obvious that the gap remaining is far smaller than the throughput that I'm capable of. I feel like I'm spending all my time competing with other healers to fill the limited opportunities for healing in the fight as quickly as possible, since nobody is ever in the danger zone for longer than it takes for five instant heals to land on them.

No amount of healing gear will prevent people from dying stupidly to avoidable mechanics.

The patch cycle

Tier sets and trinkets threaten to change my gameplay with every new drop. I think the designers have let the final tier of the expansion become an excuse to go fucking nuts with any and all class bonuses. So now I feel like a complete dolt for thinking item level was going to matter at all when it's actually all about the bonuses.

I understand Rushing Jade Wind is popular now. Makes sense to take it into fights with heavy stacking, but it's the definition of situational, and it's really not a situation that happens so consistently that you need to improve the spell that you already have for that situation-- at least not at the expense of one of our most powerful cooldowns.

Apparently, Xuen has been declared underpowered this tier. I'm not sure how they are measuring relative "power" in this case, because one talent is a spell that costs a a shitload of mana and only hits the people standing right next to you, while the other doesn't even cost a GCD and does more than half a million healing. Xuen saves lives. Having a tiger up is like having another half healer for 45 seconds. It makes a hard phase easy, even if you don't happen to be standing next to all the people who need healing.

It's obvious what's happening. Monks have too much regen, again. Same as last expansion. Rushing Jade Wind is a mana dump. The ridiculously slow GCD we've been given this expansion probably doesn't help either-- it's not surprising that Mistweavers feel like their GCD is limiting them more than mana.

If you're overflowing with mana you don't need to waste a talent on a spell upgrade that will only help some of the time-- just cast more Surging Mists. One of the strongest points of our class is the 0.5-second channel fast heal combo. If you're not using this every time a raid member is in danger you're not playing a Monk properly.


I joined a new raid. They have some great players but they care way too much about gear and have a stupid policy of prioritising healers and tanks. It kind of makes sense, until you consider the central leadership of the guild all play tanks and healers, and then it makes perfect sense.

I think I'll ask them whether they think this policy might affect raider turnover. It's not unusual to have something of a "curve" to your raiders' performance, but I can't help but notice that this guild is overflowing with skilled healers and tanks (even ones that aren't guild officers) but has only a handful of DPS with a similar level of performance.